Google Donates 15,000 Raspberry Pi Computers to U.K. Schools

By Nick Clayton

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Schmidt: Critical of U.K. computing education

Schools in the U.K. are to be receive 15,000 free Raspberry Pi computers, with the aim of creating the next generation of computer scientists.

Google 's executive chairman Eric Schmidt was in the Raspberry Pi’s home town of Cambridge, U.K. Tuesday with the co-founder of the Foundation that developed the cut-price computer, Eben Upton, to teach some coding to schoolkids and to make an announcement, reports PC Magazine.

The Web giant’s charitable arm, Google Giving, has awarded a grant to the Raspberry Pi Foundation to provide funding for the donation of 15,000 Raspberry Pi Model B computers to schoolchildren around the U.K. who are interested in computer science. The devices will be handed out with the help of six educational institutions to children “who demonstrate an aptitude and passion for computing,” Google said in a blog post…

The six educational partners that will be handing out Raspberry Pis include: Codeclub, Computing At School, Generating Genius, Coderdojo, Teach First and OCR. Each device will come with an educational packet created by OCR that was designed to help the children get the most out of their new Pi.

There seemed to be a slight danger that the success of the Raspberry Pi was going to pull it away from its original educational objective. Over a million of the $35 credit card-sized computers have been sold to be used as the programmable brains of anything from media players to microbreweries.

The initial big idea, however, was that the Linux-powered pocket PCs were to be used to encourage kids to take up coding rather than to provide cheap processing power for adult hobbyists.

The really good sign is that industry has a visible commitment now to trying to solve the problem of CS education in the UK. Grants like this show us that companies like Google aren’t prepared to wait for government or someone else to fix the problems we’re all discussing, but want to help tackle them themselves.

Google Giving is the search giant’s charitable arm and donates money to a range of projects from disaster relief to helping deprived children.

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